Black Friday, Or the Circulation of Commodities

Alibaba.com, sometimes known as “the Chinese eBay,” connects shoppers looking to purchase commodities in bulk directly with manufacturers from across the world. The site encompasses more or less every salable object in existence.

The visualizations below were made by scraping data and images from various product categories of interest on Alibaba’s site. They recreate the “warehouse” Alibaba doesn’t need to maintain, and represent only a tiny sample of what’s available for purchase.